The Australian Government's move to ratify the Kyoto Protocol means that Australia is now legally obliged to ensure its emissions growth is limited to not more than 108 per cent above 1990 levels by 2012.

Mandatory corporate reporting of greenhouse gas emissions began this year and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is expected to commence in 2010 - requiring liable companies to surrender emission reduction permits against their greenhouse gas emissions.

The preferred position in the Green Paper for the CPRS is that the scheme will not initially recognise permits from domestic offsets. The government will consider the scope for offsets from emissions sources that cannot be included in the scheme in 2013.

Annual savanna fires across northern Australia produce upwards of 3 per cent of our national greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that has risen significantly since the removal of Indigenous people from their traditional estates. Now, without proper management, a high proportion of fires occur late in the dry season which means more combustible fuel gets burnt, releasing more emissions into the atmosphere.

The northern savanna environment can be better managed by employing Indigenous people to use their knowledge, skill and abilities to reduce the amount of land that gets burnt, and also to reduce the frequency and intensity of the sorts of intense fires that produce large quantities of very potent and polluting greenhouse gases.

Importantly, the last decade has seen Indigenous Australians steadily resuming active management of their ancestral lands through the development of community-based ranger groups. In particular, this movement has spread rapidly across northern Australia, from Cape York Peninsula to the Kimberley. Indigenous rangers are providing unique environmental services using traditional knowledge of their country in partnership with western knowledge to deal with new threats.

Creating Indigenous climate change solutions will require innovative remote area employment programs and associated Indigenous businesses to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere. Programs such as these have clear potential for delivering enduring benefits to our Australian society, our environment and the economy.

By reducing the amount of country that gets burnt, particularly in the later part of the year, the amount of gases that go into the atmosphere will be reduced. Importantly, the science that underpins the measurement of this reduction is now one of the most robust and acceptable in the 'agricultural sector' under the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Scientists, working closely with remote Indigenous communities over the past 15 years, have refined satellite monitoring technology to give a clearer understanding of greenhouse gas emissions from fires as they progress across the landscape.

Beyond environmental benefits

However, the benefits of meaningfully involving Indigenous people in the response to climate change run much deeper than just the useful environmental outcomes.

To close the gap across the spectrum of Indigenous disadvantage, taking a community-driven approach on issues that resonate strongly with the community will achieve outcomes that are beneficial to the health and wellbeing of those that live on the land.

Connecting education and training with practical initiatives that improve the governance and social equity outcomes for remotely located people can be supported through the climate change agenda. Some in the corporate sector already appreciate that these sorts of linkages in dealing with Indigenous disadvantage produce the maximum financial outcomes downstream.

The example of fire as a land management practice illustrates an important approach to the dilemma facing the nation on climate change policy and Indigenous people - how to engage with the most vulnerable parts of our society and empower them to deal not only with the direct effects of climate change on their lives, but with policy responses that produce real income and support the cost of living in the regions.

While there are opportunities for 'fire reduction' carbon offset to be sold into the voluntary market, it is of paramount importance that the Australian Government considers the inclusion of these offsets in the design of the CPRS and other strategies associated with climate change adaptation and mitigation.

What is required now is recognition that improved land management by Indigenous Australians can make significant gains to overall targets, as well as the broader social and economic integrity of remote areas.

While the government expresses its commitment to facilitate the participation of Indigenous land managers in carbon markets, waiting until 2013 to make a decision about the recognition of offsets in the CPRS will be too late.

It would be the ultimate irony if - after being silenced and dispossessed for two centuries - Indigenous Australians are again ignored at the very moment they can make a genuine contribution to not just saving the continent, but playing our bit in saving the planet.

I call on the Australian Government to engage creatively with Indigenous people around the nation and to develop appropriate policies that enable and support increased community capacity and economic and social development under the climate change agenda.

Joe Morrison is the chief executive officer of the North Australian Indigenous Land & Sea Management Alliance. NAILSMA facilitates practical initiatives across Northern Australia's wet/dry tropics and is committed to finding practical solutions to support people to manage their lands into the future. Its members are the Kimberley, Northern and Carpentaria Land Councils and Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation.